


I wish I could live without you but you’re apart of me.

by mintslove



Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Character Study, Death of a loved one, Five Stages of Grief, Grief/Mourning, Han Jumin Has Feelings, M/M, juminxv if you squint but really it’s hardly in it, kinda a character study if you squint really, spoilers for Vs route, takes place in secret ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:14:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29078427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mintslove/pseuds/mintslove
Summary: Griefkeen mental suffering or distress over affliction or loss; sharp sorrow; painful regret.-“I wish.. things could have been different for us … for you I can't change what has happened no matter how    much I want it.”
Relationships: Han Jumin/V | Kim Jihyun
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	I wish I could live without you but you’re apart of me.

He doesn’t cry, his best friend is dead and he doesn’t cry. His first thought is about how cold his hands felt.  
Jumin’s hands are freezing. At first Jumin is made up of ice stone and bitter feelings that he swallows down with wine. Until he builds himself into a forest fire in his mind of every living memory of him and V. He denies it because if he runs through his memories of V he has to admit there is a reason to remember him at all. 

Until guilt finds its way into him. He is guilty for weeks on end. Until it buries the hurt feelings beneath it. Jumin doesn’t want to think of the hurt beneath himself. He could force himself to be okay. So he buries himself into work. It’s easy for him to talk with the RFA and he has Elizabeth the third. Those things keep him at a normal schedule; he promises himself that he is okay except he’s not. 

At night he is a thunderstorm of thoughts that keep him awake. He can’t remember the last time he’d gotten a goodnight sleep. His dreams are filled with V. Of him dying him smiling him turning to face Jumin.  
So he tries to push away the bitter thoughts for himself. Of the bitter thoughts of V. 

Until they spill into him and he can’t stop until he himself is a hurricane of emotion.  
Until he is staring down at a gravestone with his best friend's name across it. It feels like a nightmare that refuses to end and it makes him so fucking angry.He stands at Vs gravesite that anger burning through him.

“....Did you know I would have done anything for you?... if it had meant you could have lived I would have done anything V. Why didn’t you let me help you?.. Why would you leave me again? Why didn’t you need me as much as I need you!” 

Jumin realizes he is screaming and raging at a dead man at nothing more than a gravestone he curses. The dead don’t speak back and because of this V dies over and over again in Jumin’s head.  
There was nothing beautiful about death, nothing poetic, the dead don’t speak back and Jumin wished he could have told V that. V had once told him he wanted to create a masterpiece so beautiful he would find peace with death in it. Jumin wants to scream at V that there is nothing beautiful in death because it leaves someone behind. Jumin’s Han’s mind is a forever forest fire of all the ways he could have helped V. He's angry at V for leaving and even more angry at himself for not forcing the truth out of V.  
...  
He is so tired and so hurt that it pours out of him at once.  
“I’m so sorry Jihyun..” He says wanting a response, needing it, calling out for it in pure desperation.  
He cries out tears blurring his eyes he’s practically choking on his own tears. He’s truly alone it’s an uncomfortable realization  
because Jumin had always been alone but he had Jihyun. Now he has nothing but quicksand of bitter thoughts and a forest fire.

It is in this moment he is finally swallowed whole by his own grief, the feeling he’d been refusing the acknowledgement that Jihyun is truly gone. That he couldn’t have done anything that Jumin who’d always had so much power and wealth couldn’t help the person he cared about most. He couldn't stop crying the well built damn that had been holding every feeling he’d ever had finally cracked and he sobbed until his lungs ached until he couldn’t breathe. 

He visits her the next day.

She seemed to be doing well.. better then she was before the doctor had told Jumin she’d improved.  
Rika meets Jumin's eyes. She is a muddled person to Jumin. He wants to hate her but he can’t. “I’m sorry.” She says in a weak voice he doesn’t respond. She’s as much a ghost as Jihyun is“I’m sorry.” She says again. He nods to let her know he’d heard her. He can’t forgive her he isn’t sure he ever will.There is an impossible wall that’s built between the two of them now. He hasn't even forgiven Jihyun. He doesn't know why he’s here now visiting her and he regrets coming at all.  
“I-.” She starts again but this time tears well in her eyes. She’d hardly spoken since Jihyun’s funeral according to Yoosung. It hurts Jumin to look at her almost as much as it hurts to think of Jihyun. She goes to her dresser, small sobs breaking from her lips.  
She holds out a familiar looking pipe to him and a small leather bound notebook and a key ,tears in her eyes he tries to will himself to hate her again but he can’t even now. Jumin walks over to her unable to meet her gaze again and takes it slowly holding it in his hands. “Thank you.” He says numbly and he means it. It’s something that had once been Jihyun’s now his.  
After he visits Rika he finds himself driving to Jihyun’s grave again.  
Jihyun is a part of Jumin.  
It’s a slow realization not a bitter one if anything Jumin finds peace in that.  
Jumin will think of Jihyun everytime he pours himself a glass of wine. Jumin will think of Jihyun in crowded rooms trying to find a familiar face to pin too. Grief has a way of making you feel like you are okay that the world itself hasn’t fallen upside down.  
Other days it will feel like the wind has been knocked out of you like you can’t breathe that you might drown because of it if you aren’t careful and it is an infinite dreadful feeling of knowing you might grow older than a friend who has grown beside you all your life who’d you shared birthday parties with. Knowing that you will never be able to pick up a phone and hear that relaxed sort of familiarity speaking back to you or of a person who knows you that well again. If you see a familiar bundle of blue that is in fact that it’s not Jihyun and it never will be yet you still have to remind yourself that it can’t be Jihyun because Jihyun is gone. Everything buried beneath.. taking everything but leaving nothing behind but open memories and wounds and fears that one day he might just forget the sound of Jihyun’s laugh or even how he smelt it’s a silly thought but it’s a wicked sort of fear. He bites down on the inside of his cheek. He sits beside the gravestone ignoring the restrictiveness of his suit and the feeling of cold grass beneath him he thumbs at his knees before pulling the pipe from his pocket and packing it with the same tobacco he knew Jihyun had liked. Looking up at the starlight sky and the sound of nature around him he lights it breathing it in finding a simple sort of peace.  
“I never understood your fascination with this Jihyun.” He said coughing patting on his chest. He doesn’t wait for a response. “ I miss you. I miss you so much.” Droplets fall down his cheek. “My dearest friend.. and my only -.. “ He can’t finish so instead he shuts his eyes letting out a breath for now he is too terrified to admit that last bit even though he knows that it’s too late it’s just to himself Jihyun is gone he won’t allow those feelings to spill past him today. “I wish.. things could have been different for us … for you I can't change what has happened no matter how much I want it.” This isn’t a goodbye because Jihyun is gone and so he can never truly say goodbye. 

He can hardly even remember their last conversation. Jumin had been angry and V had been apologetic they weren’t really speaking just talking unconnected. He might regret that the most.

“Do you remember when you almost died.. that day when your mother saved you.. I was so grateful I don’t know what I would have done if she hadn’t..you were my whole world back then I remember that look on your face-.” He breathes in the tobacco again before he speaks. “I wish I would have told you to become a painter when you asked. - that you could have done it that I believed in you I wish I could have been that for you.”  
He is a cavern of wishes and things they both could have done differently.

Jumin isn't a painter, he'd never been good at art or found an interest other than perhaps viewing it in particular. He had once remarked to V that he’d never have to learn how to take a good photo because V would always be there.  
Jumin doesn’t say anything else he just takes in the stars and the smoke that surrounds him. 

He really thinks one day he will be okay. 

The days would be hard he knew that now he couldn’t will himself into being forced into a false pretense of pushing away his feelings. He would have to understand his emotions and deal with them as they came. He would no longer strangle them down; he couldn’t do that anymore he wouldn’t. 

He would allow himself to grieve for Jihyun .

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to end this story on a hopeful note for Jumin. 
> 
> the song that inspired this is the title.
> 
> anyway i hope you enjoyed the story comments are appreciated.


End file.
